Food journal

Weight loss diaries: Forever trying to lose weight

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“In life, there are times when you’re gonna be as skinny as a celery stick and times when you’re gonna be as fat as a sack of mashed potatoes🤦🏾‍♀️. Get used to both cause starting over is the name of the game. “

The other day, I caught myself being pissed at myself (breaking news😂). It seems every year I find myself trying to lose 5-10 Pds either because I am skinny and ungrateful (never skinny enough which can be a disease in itself😩) or fat and delusional (surprisingly when I am really fat that’s when I think I have the least amount of weight to lose🙄). Sometimes I feel like I spend my time fighting petty diet stuff in my head all day long.

Hence, this excerpt of a convo I’ve had with myself so many times it’s not even funny anymore:

Husband makes homemade hamburger buns and instead of saying “Thank you” and enjoying said burgers here I am once again going around in circle in my mind:

Lower self: “I am going to eat two burgers. I am starving!”

Higher self: “Eat two but take one as an open bun. Less carb...”

Lower self: “You don’t have to do that, it’s homemade. Take two full buns.”

Higher Self: “You’ve been gorging on carbs for two days now on the account of it being homemade.”

Lower Self: “Life is short, Covid have thought us that much so take two buns and add some chips while you’re at it.”

Higher Self: “Ok, so now we’re adding chips too?“

Lower Self: “They’re air -fried sweet potato and yucca chips, you fool! Doesn’t get better than that.”

Higher Self: “Fine! Eat them you weak thing! Just don’t come crying to me when Summer hits and you’re looking 3 months pregnant.”

Lower Self: “Shut up you pessimistic bully! She can always google how to dress a pregnant belly when not pregnant.”

ME: 😲😲😲😲😲🤕

And just in case you’re wondering how that ended, just know I ate the two full bun burgers plus the chips and some desert. To tell you the truth I felt like I deserved it after that intense session of self-flagellation.

Now, what’s the point of this story you may ask: Well, there are two points to this story:

  1. First one is to make myself feel better for using “homemade” as an excuse to overeat.
  2. Second one is to tell you, in case you’ve been lately incline to do so yourself , that it’s a long road and there’s not point beating yourself to a pulp with the celery stick. The goal is to be happy and fit not a miserable dry pepperoni. Nobody has ever accomplished anything by beating themselves up. It’s a work in progress( I should probably record that last bit and keep it close by for when I am having a bad day🙋🏾‍♀️)

Plus, like I tell myself all the time: At the very least, it’s homemade!

Naturally I would be a hypocrite if I did not mentioned the extra pounds are gonna be “home-gained” as well…at the very least😉😋

Number one weight loss mistake: Failing to plan for failure

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Today I am back with another article in my weight loss journey. You can read about my last post here (How to get back in shape after the holidays: Take One).

Dear husband is usually shocked at my capacity to plan my life around what I eat. In fact, if you were to ask him about my interests, he’d most likely say: Eating and shopping🙄. The minute I finish supper, I am inquiring about breakfast. Mid-breakfast, I am already worried about lunch. Lunch’s barely over that my mouth’s watering over supper. It’s a never ending story.

“Looking at the way I gorged myself on carbs these past weeks, I am not quite sure whether my goal is to be chubby fit or slim🤦🏽‍♀️. I am most certainly heading towards chubby fit….”

Which brings me to a very important component in a weight loss journey: The cheating pattern. Most people fail because they plan for success but fail to plan for failure. In their head, there’s only room for success so when failure happens they find themselves completely unprepared. They assume they are these great beings blessed with outstanding disciplines.

It’s not enough to say I cheated on my diet. You need to also take a cold look at the circumstances of this cheating and come up with a practical solution for the future to either prevent or diminish such occurrence. What was the situation? Who were you with? what time was it? What happened before? What happened after? what mood were you in? We’re looking for a pattern that usually lead you to cheat. Until you can recognize this pattern, willpower won’t work.

Last week and this week😶 were bad in terms of diet. I ate when I felt low and I ate when I felt happy, I ate when it was cloudy and I ate when it was sunny. I was all over the place. In order to move forward I need t o look at each situation in which I ate bad or overate and find a common thread so I can prepare adequately for these moments and limit them as much as possible.

PATTERN RECOGNITION:

Picture this, it’s Friday morning and right after breakfast.

9:00 am

Me: “Wheat are we going to eat for supper? Let’s get something out and plan.”

Dear husband: “Why so soon? We just ate!!!????”

Me: “True”!

We then each go take care of our respective business up until around 1:00 pm. At that time, we usually have a salad with some form protein. We then go back to our respective to-do lists for the day.

6:00 pm – I make a second attempt at planning something to eat with very little conviction since I myself am already slipping into” let’s-purposefully-forget-to-plan-and-order-something kind of mood”. To which dear husband usually gives a half-hearted answer. Naturally, I don’t insist cause I know what’s coming.

8:00 pm – Dear husband comes upstairs to see what I am doing during which time I express the desire of wanting to eat something…anything. At such time, we both agree we have no energy to cook anything. Dear husband pulls out his phone and suggests something like pizza or Indian food. I then offer a very mild version of resistance to which dear husband fail to even acknowledge.

8:45 pm – Whatever we’ve ordered gets delivered. We take it in the TV room.

The End.

SOLUTION

This type of situation usually happens closer to the weekend, like around Thursday. We are going to plan a menu specific to Fridays and Saturdays. We’ll prepare the menu at the beginning of the week and shop accordingly. Mostly something exciting since we often order out because what we have at home is not exciting enough to get us pumped to eat.

For example, on Friday, we can have burger night and prepare everything from scratch. On Saturday, we could buy a nice piece of veal and have some kind of crock pot with some veggies. This will not only provide us with breakfast for Sunday morning therefore allowing us to avoid binging on croissants but also serve as a base for a few more meals the following week. I believe that’s what most people would call adulting😏.

Since it’s obviously turning into a Serie, I will update you on how we’re doing on that count next week and possibly talk about other pitfalls. In the meantime, take care, stay safe and bisoux!🐍😘

How to get back in shape after the holidays: Take One

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Last year right in the middle of quarantine, dear husband and I started limiting our carbs and eating mostly protein and veggies. With that, by mid-October I had already lost close to 18 pounds. I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I was of myself.

“While most everyone around me were crumbling under insane amounts of weight gain with some even growing extra chins in the process; there I was, 15 pounds lighter, walking around like the last man standing. Naturally, what was bound to happen, happened. I became cocky…”

And so disturbingly so I became complacent. I started slipping and not the kind of slipping where you miss a step. No. The kind of slipping where you miss so many steps you can’t even retrace your steps. All this to say; I am back on the getting back in shape bandwagon and it’s not funny. It goes without saying that I am bitter as well 🙄

If I look intelligent, it’s because I am not breathing🤣

So, with that in mind, please allow me to serve as both a warning and a messenger of hope with a few advice to help you stay the course of getting back in shape. A few rules I try to follow whenever I am trying to get back on the weight loss bandwagon:

  1. Start right now! Do not wait for your fridge to be empty or your cook to die so you can be free from temptation. Start now.
  2. Start with exercise or diet? Just start with what’s easiest for you. For me it’s exercise but it does not have to be long. It could be just 20 or 15 or 10 minutes of a fitness video or a simple walk.
  3. Start small and build it up from there. The point is to get into the habit, not having result right away: One good thing I did right before the holidays was that I maintained or at least tried to maintain my exercise routine which was and still remains two sessions of weight lifting twice a week. Because I knew it was gonna be difficult getting back in shape after such a big slip and I didn’t want to find myself not only cleaning up my diet but also trying to get back to a new exercise routine.
  4. Redefine result: When we’re trying to lose weight, we tend to obsess over the scale and lose track of other measures of result. Replace the word result by improvement. Instead of keeping track of weight lost or gained, at first; keep track of improvements. A few other “measures of result” that we don’t often stop to realize are: Having a bit more energy, mood improving, sleep improving, more focus… so enlarge your definition of result. I know it’s difficult because when I first heard of that same thing I was like, who cares if I am sleeping well as long as I am skinny?🙄
  5. Start a journal to keep track of any positive things happening as a result of your new efforts.
  6. Give yourself 6 weeks to start seeing some improvement. Notice I did not say results but improvements. There is a difference.

Next week I will continue with other tips and let you know how I am personally failing at taking my own advice😅 and update you on my getting back in shape journal. If you have any other tips and experience, please comment below. I’d love to hear them!

Bisoux and talk soon:)😘🐍

What to do when you’ve blown your diet

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The goal is not to beat yourself up but to find out what went wrong and prevent it from happening too often.

“Forgive yourself and resist the urge to stick to plain water for the next 100 years.”

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Surprisingly, the day we ate two pizzas, one entree and 16 wings started well enough. As usual I woke up, showered, got dressed, pat down a cocktail of serum on my face until it became numb and put on some bright lipstick. I also went for a 45 min walk. I know I should be awarded a medal😎. On top of that, I made some quinoa and black beans for lunch. Had I just ran a marathon, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have been any prouder.

But then it started to go downhill from that point on…We’re in the kitchen getting dinner ready. We’ve prepared a chicken dish and it’s in the oven and getting crispy. But somehow a little demon started whispering “pizza” in my ears😈. First, I tried to ignore it. That lasted about 5 seconds, then I heard myself saying “Well, if it wasn’t such a bad idea, we could order pizza”. Dear husband didn’t answer at first. I took that as a chance to get back to my senses. Just when I thought I’d successfully crossed that bridge with minimum damage to my waistline, I heard him say: “what kind?”

Me: “What do you mean what kind?”

Dear husband: “What kind of pizza?”

While I am a woman of my words, dear husband is certainly a man of his actions. He’ll only discuss something while doing it or once it’s done. So we had pizza while our healthy dinner was practically done!

FOR HAVING BEING THERE DONE THAT, HERE’S WHAT I DO WHEN I’VE BLOWN IT:

  1. Forgive yourself and resist the urge to stick to plain water for the next hundreds years.
  2. Rewind and look at the whole sequence of events leading to that point when you went hog wild:
    • I was in the basement which is very comfortable – I had been hungry for more than 2 hours – I wasn’t particularly hungry for what I was going to eat for super
  3. By the time we got down to cooking dinner we were already too hungry. Don’t wait till you’re hungry to make make something to eat. Prep all food in advance and get them ready before you get hungry so that by the time you’re hungry you have something ready made. As a matter of fact, plan all of your meals for that day as soon as you wake up.
  4. Watch out for those moments when you’re particularly vulnerable and plan for them. Sometimes it’s not always between good and bad. It’s between bad and worst.
  5. Make it easy to do the right thing. Make sure your environment support the healthy habit you want to promote. I know if I am watching TV late at night, there will be some serious damage done to my diet.
  6. Make a food journal

For me personally, I feel like it’s important to try and maintain some kind of discipline (After 2 pizzas and 16 wings that is😏), specially during this quarantine. Yes, we’re inside now for the most part but at some point we’re gonna have go out and I don’t have money to buy a new wardrobe to accommodate quarantine weight gain so I got to deal😛.